Depressing topic but....

51.
Posted bywotthefiqh(Inactive 1447 posts) 11y
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Quoting Jase007

Quoting wotthefiqh

Quoting wotthefiqh

Quoting Jase007

I have two thoughts on this:

1 = every super power needs an enemy, for without an enemy there is no need for a super power. This has been demonstrated time and again throughout history & is still very relevant today. [/i]

Perhaps you could elaborate on thought 1.

Did -1) the Roman Empire need Attila the Hun?2) the Byzantine Empire need moslem armies battering the gates of Constantinople for almost 800 years before Islam finally got a foothold in Europe?

Please demonstrate and make it relevant.

Hey Jase,Are you gonna post any evidence supporting thought 1? -

The Rancid Ronin

Na, bored of the subject at the moment more pressing things on.The patronising school teacher comments on elaboration just ruined it Maybe if I can be bothered having a debate when/if I get back home in a few months.Go ahead and comment though, just don't strain the brain too much eh I won't read anything with paragraphs over 7 line long

Jase,Your avoidance of the question is ruining it for meIf this has been demonstrated so often, surely it would only take you a moment to substantiate your assertion, or is it nothing more than anti-americanism wrapped up in a cliche first voiced as soon as the Soviet Empire imploded back in 1989?

P.S. Your posts #9 and #17 in this thread ain't exactly short on rhetoric and some paragraphs may well be over 7 lines long

52.
Posted bykombizz(Full Member 1416 posts) 11y
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Attack on Iran will be military suicide Sun, 04 Nov 2007 17:08:38 By Gordon Prather

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (L) and Russian President Vladimir Putin (R) A couple of weeks ago, Russian President Putin made a historic visit to Iran, nominally to attend a summit of the Caspian Sea littoral states - Russia, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan and Iran.

The summit, itself, resulted in a number of 'milestone' agreements, including one prohibiting other countries (such as the United States) from using - 'in any circumstances' - territory or facilities of any Caspian Sea littoral state (such as Azerbaijan) for 'use of force or aggression' against another (such as Iran).

And if that message wasn't clear enough, Putin also met privately with Iranian President Ahmadinejad, declaring afterwards in a joint press conference that Iran is an important regional and global power'.

Putin also took the opportunity to tell the world that he had seen no 'evidence' - Director-General ElBaradei of the International Atomic Energy Agency hasn't even found an 'indication' - that Iran was pursuing a nuclear weapons program. Therefore, Russia would go ahead and complete the IAEA safeguarded nuclear power plant at Bushehr.

Talk about pinning the tail on Bush's donkey with a nail-gun.

But, protested Bush, who had just been told by Putin that he wouldn't even be allowed to launch a 'surgical' attack - much less another war of aggression - against Iran from our 'temporary' air base in Azerbaijan, [says]

'We've got a leader in Iran who has announced that he wants to destroy Israel.'

(That's a lie, of course. Ahmadinejad has never made such an announcement.)

As Bush must know, even if Ahmadinejad wanted to merely effect regime change in Israel - much less destroy the country - he couldn't. Iran's President is not - even in time of war - commander-in-chief of the Iranian armed forces. Or even of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, which Condi-baby has just designated to be somehow involved in 'nuclear proliferation'.

Of course, in time of wars declared by our Congress, our President is the commander-in-chief of our armed forces. And Bush believes - or acts as if he believes - our Congress has declared war on anyone Bush 'determines' to be a terrorist or on any state Bush 'determines' to be a supporter of terrorists.

So, quoth Bush,

"I've told people that, if you're interested in avoiding World War III, it seems like you ought to be interested in preventing them (the Iranians) from having the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon."

But apparently, Bush recently told Russian President Putin that World War III could result not because Iran allegedly has nukes with which to allegedly attack Israel, or not because Iran has the capability of making the fissile material absolutely necessary for making nukes with which to allegedly attack Israel, or not even because Iran allegedly wants to make nukes with which to allegedly attack Israel.

Taking Bush literally, all it will take for the Israelis or the United States to attack Iran, risking WWIII - with the United States and Israel on one side and Russia and China on the other - is some indication that some Iranians know how to make a nuke.

Now, Putin has frequently expressed his opposition to the Iranians acquiring nuclear weapons. But, Putin has repeatedly expressed his support for the 'inalienable right' (guaranteed by the NPT) to the use of atomic energy by the Iranians, for peaceful purposes, to be verified by the IAEA.

The Israelis - on the other hand - have repeatedly expressed their outrageous view that the capability of enriching the Uranium-235 content of large amounts of natural uranium to any level is tantamount to having the capability to make a nuclear weapon. Are they serious?

Well, back in 1981 Israel "took out" Osiraq, a French-built IAEA-safeguarded research reactor, apparently because they had concluded that Saddam Hussein expected Osiraq - in lieu of the Tooth Fairy - to miraculously leave a few nuclear weapons under his pillow.

Since 1991, thanks to the IAEA, the whole world has known that Saddam began his quest for nuclear weapons as a direct result of the Israeli raid on his IAEA safeguarded research reactor.

"Fully aware of the fact that Iraq has been a party to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons since it came into force in 1970, that, in accordance with that treaty, Iraq has accepted IAEA safeguards on all its nuclear activities, and that the agency has testified that these safeguards have been satisfactorily applied to date;

"Strongly condemns the military attack by Israel - in clear violation of the Charter of the United Nations and the norms of international conduct;

"Calls upon Israel to refrain in the future from any such acts or threats thereof;

"Further considers that the said attack constitutes a serious threat to the entire IAEA safeguards regime, which is the foundation of the non-proliferation treaty." Now, Bush the Younger has apparently adopted the equally idiotic and outrageously inflammatory view of the Israelis about Iran's IAEA safeguarded programs. Nevertheless, it was something of a surprise when Zogby America's latest poll of likely voters revealed that 52 percent "would support a US military strike to prevent Iran from building a nuclear weapon."

Worse still, according to Zogby, 53 percent believe it is 'likely' that the United States will be 'involved' in a military strike against Iran before the next presidential election.

It's too bad Zogby didn't phrase the first question this way;

"Given that the IAEA continues to verify that Iran is engaged in the pursuit of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes, as is their 'inalienable right' as a signatory to the NPT; Would you support a US or Israeli strike - in violation of the UN Charter - against Iran's IAEA safeguarded nuclear facilities, including the nuclear power plant nearing completion by the Russians at Bushehr?”

“Would you support such a strike even if it resulted in World War III, with US-Israel on one side, and Russia-China-Islam on the other?"

53.
Posted bykombizz(Full Member 1416 posts) 11y
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The Ethnic Cleansing Of Palestine

Sat, 03 Nov 2007 22:17:55

Having sent up numerous trial balloons over the past several weeks, Israel now will work on shutting down the Gaza Strip.

Having kept it virtually sealed off from the outside world ever since Hamas beat Fatah for control of it, Israel now plans to use creeping electric power outages to make life in that open-air prison totally intolerable.

Since no major power appears to have objected loudly enough to the trial balloons, Israel seems confident it can shut Gaza down without significant political repercussions.

Gaza, indeed Palestine as a whole, now poses a unique case of global insensitivity, and we should ask why. Is it because everybody else considers the Palestinian people less than human? Is it because the Israelis still keep control of the moral high ground after six decades of unremitting ethnic cleansing? Is it because the killing and displacement of Palestinians has become so common a feature of the Middle East human scene that nobody cares? Is it because objections to the usually pointless lobbing of mortar shells across the Israeli boundary are so mind numbing that people stop looking at or listening to what is actually happening to the Palestinian people?

No. All of those probably figure in some degree in the mindless global reactions to the human tragedy that is Palestine, but the hammer is fear of the charge of anti-Semitism. In addition, the hammer most artfully pairs with the universal negative: "Terrorism." It simply does not matter what the Palestinians try to do in their own defense, so long as the Israelis and international media can lump any actions to fight back under the label "terrorism." Thus, the Israelis can surround Gaza with troops, barbed wire, checkpoints and a neighbor such as Egypt that, if anything, helps the Israelis; Israel's Defense Force can bomb and strafe Gaza targets indiscriminately; and because Gaza happens to be under the elected political leadership of a US-designated terrorist group, the outside world considers those actions all right.

The Zionists built the propaganda war around Palestine and promoted it through mainstream media, particularly American. The Zionists always have won it, no matter how repressively they deal with the Palestinians. Thus, humanity at large appears to have bought into the systematic theft of the Palestinian homeland by Zionists. It is therefore not surprising that, particularly in the Western view, even though the Israelis have taken all of Palestine up the 1967 truce-line by force, the Palestinians simply should recognize Israel's right to the land and move on. People would treat no other scrap of land on the planet with such casual disregard for ownership.

Perhaps stranger still is the way Gaza plays in the run-up to pending Annapolis talks on a Middle East peace. It simply does not. The US host, Israel, and at least Fatah leader Abbas seem content with excluding a third of the Palestinian people from any role in the talks. That includes ignoring the Hamas supporters in the West Bank. However, the exclusion is more important than that. The US and Israeli players exclude Hamas and its supporters, in Gaza as well as the West Bank, because they stand for the only settlement that the Palestinian people-given any choice-would approve.

That choice-all of the West Bank and Gaza, with a capital in Jerusalem and a communications corridor- entails a colossal concession by the Palestinians: Acceptance, in perpetuity, of Israeli theft of their homeland. However, the way the Israelis and US promoters play the upcoming negotiations, the Palestinians have further major concessions to make, not least being acceptance of land trades to permit intrusive Israeli settlements in the West Bank, as well as concessions on the right of return and compensation for confiscated or destroyed property. Beyond that point, the Palestinians face hard trading on access to water, because at present they now get about 10% of the water per person that Israelis enjoy.

Because of such complications, most Middle East hands see dim prospects for the Annapolis talks. To be fair, Mahmoud Abbas seems fully aware of his inability to concede any of the main Palestinian demands. However, the Israeli delegation will insist on making no immediate concessions. Not only will the talks proceed without a full Palestinian delegation, it is simply unlikely that the Israelis will permit any substance to emerge from them. If that is the outcome, the gates will remain open to the steady Israeli encroachment on remaining Palestinian land until all of Palestine is absorbed into Israel.

The hang-up is that the Zionists can achieve the outcome they have so persistently sought only by driving the Palestinians out. Right now, because they simply refuse to give up, the Palestinians play into Zionist hands. Outsiders seem incapable of recognizing that, in similar circumstances, they would fight the Zionists tooth and nail.

Thus, even if the Zionists have to lob the mortar shells over the fence into Israeli territory themselves, they will proceed to dismantle the remainder of Palestine without interference. Peace talks, such as they might be, will have value only as means to divert public attention from the final rounds of ethnic cleansing.

DT/DT

The writer, Terrell E. Arnold is the author of the recently published work, A World Less Safe, now available on Amazon, and he is a regular columnist on rense.com. He is a retired Senior Foreign Service Officer of the US Department of State whose immediate pre-retirement positions were as Chairman of the Department of International Studies of the National War College and as Deputy Director of the State Office of Counter Terrorism and Emergency Planning.

54.
Posted bykombizz(Full Member 1416 posts) 11y
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Is a new war in Iraq looming on the horizon? Mon, 29 Oct 2007 03:42:04 Daryoush Bavar, Press TV, Tehran

The catastrophe of the Iraq war has been detrimental to the Iraqi people and consequently the entire region.

The US-led invasion opened a Pandora's Box, leading to a non-ending cycle of insecurity and violence as well as mounting tension between the country and its neighbors.

With Turkey now at the brink of attacking Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) rebels based in northern Iraq, is a new war in Iraq looming on the horizon?

Turkey is poised to launch a massive cross-border raid on Northern Iraq, where an estimated 3,000 PKK rebels use the region as a base to launch attacks against Turkish troops.

Ankara has continually demanded that Washington and Baghdad take measures to prevent the attacks and expel the separatist rebels.

Although Baghdad has promised to address the problem, it has effectively done nothing. And US military commander in northern Iraq, Major General Benjamin Mixon, has announced that he has no plans to make moves against the PKK.

As patience wears dangerously thin, Ankara has given both the US administration and Iraqi government a stark warning against their inaction.

Tensions have escalated further in recent weeks, following a series of PKK attacks that left dozens of Turkish soldiers dead.

Turkish Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has said that, "Turkey will exercise its rights under international law to strike at the terrorist organization, the PKK, if Iraq does not act on its promises to eliminate the presence of the group from northern Iraq."

The terrorist group has been blamed for thousands of bombings, assassinations, kidnappings and acts of sabotage over the past two decades.

Formed in late 1970s, the PKK launched an armed insurgency in 1984 in its quest for separating the Kurdish regions from Turkey. In the 1990s, the group, which is blacklisted as a terrorist organization by both the US and EU, dropped independence demands, but has since been seeking greater autonomy.

Over 30,000 people have been killed since the PKK began its insurgency.

Since the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq, the Iraqi Kurds have been able to form a semi-autonomous regional government, under the protection of US forces.

The PKK rebels have found Iraq's Kurdistan a safe haven where they have access to valuable logistic support. The group ended a five-year ceasefire in 2004 and stepped up its attacks inside the Turkish territories.

Turkish newspapers have slammed NATO for its alleged support of the PKK, while saying that US forces are arming the militant group in Iraq. They say this is part of a US plot to hinder the democratic process in Turkey and prevent the election of a popular government in the country.

According to a report in the Sunday Telegraph, published in October, the Kurdish guerrillas, and their sister group, PJAK, are also being funded by the US to wage a clandestine war in northwestern Iran.

Turkey, a NATO ally of the US, has grown frustrated with the protection and support that the US and Israel are giving to the PKK.

The US, EU and NATO have been urging Turkey not to launch military attacks against the PKK. However, Ankara is under increasing domestic pressure to act.

Turkey's President, Abdullah Gul, has stated that, "Even though Turkey respects the sovereignty and unity of Iraq, her patience has come to an end and will not allow Iraqi soil to be used for terrorist activities. "

The local government of Iraq's Kurdistan, on the other hand, has warned Turkey that it would resist any Turkish incursion. The Iraqi government has made efforts to crackdown on the PKK and called for a political solution.

Washington has condemned the PKK attacks, and promised to do everything possible to prevent their activities in Iraq.

White House spokeswoman, Dana Perino, has said that the United States continues to urge the Iraqis and the Turks to exercise restraint, amid escalating tension.

However, these calls for restraint, while simultaneously pressuring Pakistan into attacking Taliban and Al-Qaeda militants on the Pakistani border regions, only highlight the US hypocritical foreign policy.

Egemen Bagis, Foreign Policy Advisor to the Turkish Prime Minister, has said "The US crossed the Atlantic in the name of fighting terrorism in Iraq and Afghanistan. Turkey is helping the US in Afghanistan. And yet it doesn't allow Turkey, a NATO ally, to cross its own border for the same reasons. What sort of a friendship is this? This is how enemies behave. "

A recent poll by the Pew organization found that only 9% of Turks have a positive view about the US, while over 75% are concerned that the Americans could pose a military threat to their country.

With anti-US sentiments running high in Turkey, if Washington fails to crackdown on the PKK, a full-scale Turkish attack may be inevitable.

Such an attack would not only result in a bloody conflict in northern Iraq, but also undermine Ankara's ties with Washington.

The ecological effects of war, like its horrific toll on human life, are exponential. When the Bush Administration and their Congressional allies sent our troops in to Iraq to topple Saddam's regime, they not only ordered these men and women to commit crimes against humanity, they also commanded them to perpetrate crimes against nature.

The first Persian Gulf War had a horrific effect on the environment, as CNN reported in 1999, "Iraq was responsible for intentionally releasing some 11 million barrels of oil into the Persian Gulf from January to May 1991, oiling more than 800 miles of Kuwaiti and Saudi Arabian coastline. The amount of oil released was categorized as 20 times larger than the Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska and twice as large as the previous world record oil spill. The cost of cleanup has been estimated at more than $700 million."

During the build up to George W. Bush's invasion of Iraq, Saddam loyalists promised to light oil fields afire, hoping to expose what they claimed were the US's underlying motives for attacking their country: oil. The US architects of the Iraq war surely knew this was a potential reality once they entered Baghdad in March of 2003. Hostilities in Kuwait resulted in the discharge of an estimated 7 million barrels of oil, culminating in the world's largest oil spill in January of 1991.

The United Nations later calculated that of Kuwait's 1,330 active oil wells, half had been set ablaze. The pungent fumes and smoke from those dark billowing flames spread for hundreds of miles and had horrible effects on human and environmental health. Saddam Hussein was rightly denounced as a ferocious villain for ordering his retreating troops to destroy Kuwaiti oil fields.

However, the United States military was also responsible for much of the environmental devastation of the first Persian Gulf War. In the early 1990s, the US drowned at least 80 crude oil ships to the bottom of the Persian Gulf, partly to uphold the UN's economic sanctions against Iraq. Vast crude oil slicks formed, killing an unknown quantity of aquatic life and sea birds while wrecking havoc on local fishing and tourist communities.

Months of bombing during the first Persian Gulf War by US and British planes and cruise missiles also left behind an even more deadly and insidious legacy: tons of shell casings, bullets and bomb fragments laced with depleted uranium. In all, the US hit Iraqi targets with more than 970 radioactive bombs and missiles.

More than 15 years later, the health consequences from this radioactive bombing campaign are beginning to come into focus. And they are dire. Iraqi physicians call it "the white death"-leukemia. Since 1990, the incident rate of leukemia in Iraq has grown by more than 600 percent. The situation was compounded by Iraq's forced isolation and the sadistic sanctions regime, once described by former UN secretary general Kofi Annan as "a humanitarian crisis", that made detection and treatment of the cancers all the more difficult.

Most of the leukemia and cancer victims aren't soldiers. They are civilians. Depleted uranium is a rather benign sounding name for uranium-238, the trace elements left behind when the fissionable material is extracted from uranium-235 for use in nuclear reactors and weapons. For decades, this waste was a radioactive nuisance, piling up at plutonium processing plants across the country. By the late 1980s, there was nearly a billion tons of the material.

Then weapons designers at the Pentagon came up with a use for the tailings. They could be molded into bullets and bombs. The material was free and there was plenty at hand. Also, uranium is a heavy metal, denser than lead. This makes it perfect for use in armor-penetrating weapons, designed to destroy tanks, armored-personnel carriers and bunkers.

When the tank-busting bombs explode, the depleted uranium oxidizes into microscopic fragments that float through the air like carcinogenic dust, carried on the desert winds for decades. The lethal bits when inhaled stick to the fibers of the lungs, and eventually begin to wreck havoc on the body in the form of tumors, hemorrhages, ravaged immune systems and leukemias.

It didn't take long for medical teams in the region to detect cancer clusters near the bomb sites. The leukemia rate in Sarajevo, pummeled by American bombs in 1996, tripled in five years following the bombings. But it's not just the Serbs who are ill and dying. NATO and UN peacekeepers in the region are also coming down with cancer.

The Pentagon has shuffled through a variety of rationales and excuses. First, the Defense Department shrugged off concerns about Depleted Uranium as wild conspiracy theories by peace activists, environmentalists and Iraqi propagandists. When the US's NATO allies demanded that the US disclose the chemical and metallic properties of its munitions, the Pentagon refused.

Depleted uranium has a half-life of more than 4 billion years, approximately the age of the Earth. Thousand of acres of land in the Balkans, Kuwait and southern Iraq have been contaminated forever.

Speaking of DU and other war-related disasters, former chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix, prior to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, said the environmental consequences of the Iraq war could in fact be more ominous than the issue of war and peace itself. Despite this stark admission, the US made no public attempts to assess the environmental risks that the war would inflict.

Blix was right. On the second day of President Bush's invasion of Iraq, it was reported by the New York Times and the BBC that Iraqi forces had set fire to several of the country's large oil wells. Five days later in the Rumaila oilfields, six dozen wellheads were set ablaze. The dense black smoke rose high in the southern sky of Iraq, fanning a clear signal that the US invasion had again ignited an environmental tragedy. Shortly after the initial invasion the United Nations Environment Program's (UNEP) satellite data showed that a significant amount of toxic smoke had been emitted from burning oils wells. This smoldering oil was laced with poisonous chemicals such as mercury, sulfur and furans, which can causes serious damage to human as well as ecosystem health.

According to Friends of the Earth, the fallout from burning oil debris, like that of the first Persian Gulf War, has created a toxic sea surface that has affected the health of birds and marine life. One area that has been greatly impacted is the Sea of Oman, which connects the Arabian Sea to the Persian Gulf byway of the Strait of Hormuz. This waterway is one of the most productive marine habitats in the world. In fact, the Global Environment Fund contends that this region "plays a significant role in sustaining the life cycle of marine turtle populations in the whole North-Western Indo Pacific region." Of the world's seven marine turtles, five are found in the Sea of Oman and four of those five are listed as "endangered" with the other listed as "threatened".

The future indeed looks bleak for the ecosystems and biodiversity of Iraq, but the consequences of the US military invasion will not only be confined to the war stricken country. The Persian Gulf shores, according to BirdLife's Mike Evans, is "one of the top five sites in the world for wader birds, and a key refueling area for hundreds of thousands of migrating water birds." The UN Environment Program claims that 33 wetland areas in Iraq are of vital importance to the survival of various bird species. These wetlands, the UN claims, are also particularly vulnerable to pollution from munitions fallout as well as oil wells that have been sabotaged.

Mike Evans also maintains that the current Iraq war could destroy what's left of the Mesopotamian marshes on the lower Tigris and Euphrates rivers. Following the war of 1991, Saddam removed dissenters of his regime who had built homes in the marshes by digging large canals along the two rivers so that they would have access to their waters. Thousands of people were displaced. Their communities ruined.

The construction of dams upstream on the once roaring Tigris and Euphrates has dried up more than 90 percent of the marshes and has led to extinction of several animals. Water buffalo, foxes, waterfowl and boar have disappeared. "What remains of the fragile marshes, and the 20,000 people who still live off them, will lie right in the path of forces heading towards Baghdad from the south," wrote Fred Pearce in the New Scientist prior to Bush's invasion in 2003. The true effect this war has had on these wetlands and its inhabitants is still not known.

The destruction of Iraqi's infrastructure has had substantial public health implications as well. Bombed out industrial plants and factories have polluted ground water. The damage to sewage-treatment plants, with reports that raw sewage formed massive pools of muck in the streets of Baghdad immediately after Bush's 'Shock and Awe' campaign, is also likely poisoning rivers as well as human life. Cases of typhoid among Iraqi citizens have risen tenfold since 1991, largely due to polluted drinking water.

continued .......http://www.presstv.ir/Detail.aspx?id=28592&sectionid=3510304

[ Edit: Edited on Nov 5, 2007, at 12:43 AM by kombizz ]

56.
Posted byMel.(Travel Guru 4567 posts) 11y
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Quoting kombizz

[b]The summit, itself, resulted in a number of 'milestone' agreements, including one prohibiting other countries (such as the United States) from using - 'in any circumstances' - territory or facilities of any Caspian Sea littoral state (such as Azerbaijan) for 'use of force or aggression' against another (such as Iran).

A gag should be put on Bush once and for all. Of course the d*mb f**k would not stop until all the most crazy psychopathic leaders in the world have ganged up against the US, with Europe in the middle of this volatile situation.He really should have more consideration for the Allies of the US.

57.
Posted byIsadora(Travel Guru 13926 posts) 11y
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Kombizz - I highly recommend that you link the articles that you want people to read. Copying/pasting them into a thread basically kills it as few members are going to take the time to read it all - especially one right after the other. If they are interested they will follow the link, read the information and then comment at their convenience. It honestly has nothing to do with the subject matter but rather the length and number of posts. The forums are designed for discussion rather than reading the daily news that is printed somewhere else. Thank you.

58.
Posted byjames(Travel Guru 4138 posts) 11y
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Oh it's so trendy to bash Bush

Who will be next in the firing line once he's gone but the problems that you care about so much are still with us?

59.
Posted byIsadora(Travel Guru 13926 posts) 11y
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Quoting james

Oh it's so trendy to bash Bush

Who will be next in the firing line once he's gone but the problems that you care about so much are still with us?

I think we're going to have to wait for a year to find out.

Maybe I'm just (once again) tired of "the US sucks" rhetoric. Personally and honestly I'm curious, Kombizz, why you have chosen to stay in the US? This is not a leading question or one that will be used against you. I really want to know. It seems that you have great distain for the US but yet continue to make your home here. As I stated in my previous post, the forums are here for discussion and in that vain, I pose my question to you.

60.
Posted bymagykal1(Travel Guru 2026 posts) 11y
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I agree, the US bashing thing is a bit much sometimes. Sorry if I implied that with my original post, I wish I hadn't posted it now by the way, can we have a 'retract entire thread' feature?